Asian travellers increasingly plugged-in
Contributors are not employed, compensated or governed by TD, opinions and statements are from the contributor directly
Travellers are increasingly unable to unplug and disconnect as a new survey finds tourists spend as much time reporting experiences via messenger services, as they do on the beach.
Findings of Accor Asia Pacific’s second Social Media Monitor reveal that 70% of travellers across Asia Pacific now use social media when they travel, with those from China (84%), Vietnam (83%) and Indonesia (82%) the most active users.
Travellers from Australia, New Zealand and Japan are the least active, but even from those countries two in five are unable to peel themselves away from their devices while travelling.
On average, travellers are spending 2.8 hours per day on social media platforms, with the Indonesians, Malaysians and Thais all spending around four hours daily.
Facebook remains the most popular platform for travellers, followed by WhatsApp. Since last year’s survey however, Asian-made social media platforms appear to be gaining traction, with WeChat up 13% and Line up 11%.
In some markets these instant messaging platforms have even started to overtake Facebook as the dominant social network for sharing information about travel.
The use of WhatsApp is widespread in the region (33%) and has surpassed Facebook in Hong Kong, Malaysia, Singapore and India.
Line is a favourite with respondents in Thailand (71%) and overtook Facebook for the first time this year in terms of daily usage. Line is also among the top three most popular networks in Indonesia (33%) and Japan (26%).
One surprise is that WeChat has knocked Sina Weibo off top spot in Mainland China, with three in four travellers acknowledging multiple daily usage.
Meanwhile, rich media networks such as Youtube and Instagram are growing in popularity, with 23% of travellers using Youtube multiple times daily and 11% using Instagram.
Accor worked with ORC International to survey over 6500 travellers across 13 countries.
Comments are closed.